WWI Poets Challenge

Greater Love

1. notes

Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.Kindness of wooed and wooerSeems shame to their love pure.O Love, your eyes lose lure When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,Rolling and rolling thereWhere God seems not to care;Till the fierce Love they bear Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft, -- Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, --Your dear voice is not dear,Gentle, and evening clear,As theirs whom none now hear Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot, Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;And though your hand be pale,Paler are all which trailYour cross through flame and hail: Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

I don't want to slash Theodred, but I do want to address what would keep him from marriage even though he was well beyond the usual age for it among his people. (His father was married before he was 30; Theodred died at about 40 with no wife or heir on record.)This is not going to be the initial obvious presupposition, however. No. I intend to be more faithful to the poem than the poet possibly was himself.

2) "The Green Fields of France"

But here in this graveyard that is still No Man's land the countless white crosses in mute witness stand. To man's blind indifference to his fellow man to a whole generation that was butchered and damned.

Elfwine was raised in a peacetime Rohan. I wondered what the living king's son would think of the dead king's son's last moments. Would he find it meaningful?

3) "Roll With It"

what if the enemyisn't in a distant landwhat if the enemy lies behindthe voice of commandthe sound of waris a child's crybehind tinted windows,they just drive byall I know is that thosewho are going to be killedaren't those who presideon capitol hillI told him,don't fill the front linesof their warthose assholes aren't worth dying forbut he saidroll with it, babymake it your careerkeep the home fires burningtill america is in the clear

I am tired of glorifying war, however. Most of the most poignant WWI poets concluded that it was not worth the sacrifice. I think a large part of Tolkien's fantasy is a struggle that is worth fighting. There is a side who is in the right, in his stories. Which is refreshing to contemplate, as like him I watch friends and family departing for a war I cannot overcome my cynicism to muster support for.

The closest I can come in the Ardaverse is a woman of Rhun coming to terms with the fact that her husband died for less than a noble cause.

This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author.